Penance

by Rick R. Reed

  “Whatever you say.”

  They started toward the motel when Richard realized he’d only brought three or four dollars with him. Here’s your out, he told himself, now you have an excuse. Get back home where you belong. You can masturbate remembering that fine Grecian face, those strong features. But what he said was: “Hey, listen, I need to get a few bucks. There’s a money machine right over there by the McDonald’s.” Richard turned and pointed down the street, where the Golden Arches, like a beacon in the winter night, stood out. “You wait here for me? I’ll be back in two minutes.”

  “That’s cool. Go on.”

  Richard started hurrying west on Foster, toward the McDonald’s and the money machine at the bank next door. This will be the last time, he promised himself, absolutely.

  As he neared the McDonald’s, he noticed a familiar figure standing out front. The boy’s back was turned to him and it was obvious that he was exhorting strangers.

  “Hey, mister, can you spare any change? I’m hungry.”

  The boy’s voice rose above the hiss of tires on Sheridan and the wind. The voice was unmistakable.

  Jimmy.

  Suddenly, the priest felt overcome with shame, so much so that he felt almost violently ill. My God, what am I doing? Richard looked behind him at the Greek boy, waiting for him in the distance.

  Haven’t I learned anything?

  The boy turned and their eyes met.

  Jimmy.

  *

  Fuck it. Jimmy saw Father Grebb and closed his eyes in disgust. I can’t do anything without running into this guy. He turned away from the priest and continued, lightly touching the coat sleeve of an older woman.

  “Lady, please, could you spare some change?” Jimmy had panhandled all week. He had tried hustling a couple days ago, but he got sweaty and his stomach started to hurt when the guys slowed down to take a look. He had ended up running down an alley, trying hard to shove the terror back down inside himself, where he could no longer feel it.

  And now here he was, outside McDonald’s, nickel and diming it, hoping to make enough for a hamburger and a pack of cigarettes. And now he had the pervert priest bearing down on him.

  The woman dug into the pocket of her black wool coat and pulled out a quarter. “Don’t use this for drugs,” she said and hurried off.

  “I can help you out, Jimmy. What do you need?”

  The voice came from behind and Jimmy didn’t bother to turn around. “I need for you to get the fuck away from me.

  “I can understand how you feel, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy cringed. He wished the man wouldn’t use his name; he didn’t know why. It just didn’t sound right. He turned, took in the priest’s pale blue eyes, the way he shivered in the wind and snow, the lack of color in his thin lips. “You don’t understand shit, man. Now, if you’ve got some money for me, great, if not, get lost.” Jimmy thought for a moment, then said, “Screw the money, just get away from me.”

  * * *

  Richard saw right through the boy’s bravado. He could see the fear in his eyes; he could see how cold Jimmy was out here; he could see the hunger.

  “I hope you’ll at least let me stay long enough to tell you I’m sorry, Jimmy. What happened over at the house was a big mistake. I promise you it’ll never happen again.”

  “That’s right,” Jimmy said and gave a derisive laugh. “’Cause I ain’t never goin’ back there.”

  “I can understand that. I just wanted you to know I’m sorry.” Richard looked out at the street, the cars passing by on Broadway, the snow, white now, but already absorbing a film of grime; it would be grey by morning. “I also wanted you to know that whatever problems you’re having or have had, I’m here to help.” He stopped for a moment, searching the boy’s eyes for a break in the tough facade. “In any way I can.”

  “Yeah, I know the kind of help I’d get from you. Help gettin’ off, maybe. Isn’t that right?”

  “No, Jimmy, I swear…”

  The boy turned from him and ran to catch up with a man in a navy-blue overcoat. He looked prosperous. Jimmy smiled, exhorted, pleaded.

  The man rebuffed him.

  Richard dug into his pocket. He pulled one of his cards and took all the money he had out of his wallet. Walking up to Jimmy, he held out the card and the four singles.

  “Here, at least take this from me.” Richard shoved his card and the bills into Jimmy’s hand. “Get out of the snow. Get yourself something to eat. All you have to do in exchange is keep the card and if you find you need help, someone to talk to, a place to stay, whatever, call. Can I ask that much of you?”

  Jimmy stared at him, not answering. He walked away, heading north through the parking lot, being swallowed up by slanting snowflakes and night shadows.

  And he put the priest’s card in his pocket.

  Chapter 11

  Foster Avenue Beach, on Chicago’s north side, is a great place to cruise. There’s a park that runs alongside Lake Michigan, just south of the beach. A long, narrow parking lot separates the park from the shoreline. In this parking lot on any given night, one can find numerous cars, regardless of the weather. Some of the cars, like restless animals, move north and south through the parking lot…slowly, slowly. Other cars are parked, their front ends facing outward, toward the roadway.

  Most of the cars are occupied by men alone. Men who sit in their cars for hours, watching other men drive slowly by, their heads turned, searching. In the darkness, all one can see is the orange glow of cigarettes, alternately growing brighter, then dimming.

  Carlos Garcia, at fifteen, already knew the routine at the park. Many of the men here had admired the boy’s fine Cuban features: the long, black hair, the dusting of a mustache on his upper lip, the tall, angular body, smooth and brown, and the large, deep brown eyes, ringed with long black lashes.

  Carlos had never come to the park to make money. He came to meet men.

  Men had never been a part of Carlos’s life; he grew up the only boy in a family of women: a single mother, his grandmother, and three sisters. Grew up playing with dolls, playing dress-up in his grandmother’s faded Cuban nightclub clothes: glittering sequined black gowns, satin sundresses bursting with tropical colors and foliage.

  But there came a time when Carlos’s mother forced him to stop with the dolls and the dressing up. There came a time when his mother pushed him out of the house. “Go on outside, Carlos, play with the other boys,” she had said. “Look, they’re out there playin’ stickball right now. Go on, it’ll do you good. Boys aren’t supposed to be in the house with their mothers, always underfoot.”

  So Carlos learned to go outside, walk Chicago’s uptown streets, seeking out what they had to offer. The other boys ignored, spurned him even. The only attention they gave him was to make kissing sounds at him, calling him a faggot and a sissy.

  A year ago, Carlos had discovered the men’s room at Ardmore Beach. A cinder-block building, open only during the summer months, the building was a hotbed of sexual activity. Carlos had found the place empty one summer afternoon and had spent almost an hour, moving from stall to stall, reading the graffiti scrawled on the rusting metal partitions: exhortations to suck, fuck, phone numbers, descriptions of likes, dislikes, physical characteristics.

  Carlos had never seen anything like it. His heart pounded faster as he read, and he could feel a blush rising up from his chest to his cheeks, making his face hot.

  It wasn’t until the third time that he went there that Carlos actually met someone. An older man with salt and pepper hair and a heavy mustache waddled over from the stall next to Carlos, his fat erection jutting out in front of him, his khaki swimming trunks around his ankles, and shoved his penis in Carlos’s mouth without a word. It took him only seconds to use the boy, and leave, without ever saying anything to him.

  The taste of the man’s semen still in the back of his throat, Carlos followed the man, watched him join his wife and two sons on
a beach blanket.

  That was how it began. Carlos from then on spent almost every day in pursuit of…what? Carlos would never be able to say. Even though he soon discovered men enjoyed using his smooth flat stomach and his ass as well as his mouth, Carlos could never really say he liked the sex. He liked building up to it, he liked the cruising, he liked the words the men sometimes used in describing how beautiful he was. He often found his mind wandering, though, once the act began, looking forward to afterward, when maybe, just maybe, the men would talk to him, share with him some of their lives. But they never did.

  Carlos realized most of these men were married and had to hurry home, probably to a wife who was wondering what was taking her husband so long. More than once, he had been in a car with a man and seen the sacks of groceries in the backseat, knowing that this was the pretense the men used to get away.

  They always left him alone, usually without even so much as a word of thanks.

  It was then that Carlos would feel the guilt. The guilt washed over him, bringing him often to the point of nausea, so filled was he with self-revulsion. Each time he dropped to his knees or bent over for some stranger in the park, he would promise himself that that time would be his last. That never again would he allow himself to be used.

  He was too smart for that.

  Once, he even went to church and lit a candle, hoping God would hear his fervent, whispered petition. God surely would help him do what was right.

  But it seemed God never listened. Because Carlos would find himself the next day at Ardmore Beach or farther south, in the park by Foster Avenue Beach, on his knees, sucking on some married middle-aged man’s cock. Still he found himself hoping that this experience would be different, that this time the man would speak to him, even to chastise him, tell him he’d get AIDS if he wasn’t careful, tell him he should be at home, with boys his own age…anything. The hope was always there.

  Sooner or later, he thought, somewhere deep in the back recesses of his mind, he would meet the man who would be different, who would sweep him away.

  Surely, out of all these nameless, sometimes faceless encounters, he would one day run across a man who would love him.

  *

  The young man in the car with Carlos did not return his gaze. The man was buttoning up his jeans and looking forward through the windshield. He pulled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lit it, filling the little Mustang with the acrid smell of matches and burning tobacco. Carlos watched the tip of the cigarette glow orange as the man dragged on it. Look at me, Carlos sent the message telepathically. Look at me, talk to me.

  The man puffed on his cigarette, watched a red Eagle Talon cruise by.

  Carlos swallowed, trying to find his voice. He whispered, “Was that good?”

  The man continued to stare out the window, as if he hadn’t heard. “Yeah, it was great,” he said, betraying not a trace of emotion.

  “Hey, how ‘bout I give you my number?”

  Finally, the man looked over at him. He had curly light brown hair, a mustache, and tortoiseshell glasses. “Sure, if you wanna.” He sounded like a Southsider; he had that broad, coarse accent.

  Carlos looked around the dashboard and found a crumpled envelope. He smoothed it out and grabbed a pen he saw earlier in the car door’s side compartment. Taking care to write legibly, Carlos put his first and last name and his phone number on the paper.

  He handed it to the man. “Call me tonight, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “You promise, okay?”

  The man sighed. “Yeah. I promise. Look, I gotta get goin’. I’ll see you around, okay.” He turned the key in the ignition and the car hummed to life. The radio, tuned to WXRT, was playing the Police: “Roxanne.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you to call, so don’t forget, okay?” Carlos opened the door.

  “I won’t.”

  Carlos watched the car drive off, knowing he’d never hear from the guy.

  *

  Dwight Morris steered his black Toyota off Lake Shore Drive and onto the exit that would take him to Foster Avenue Beach parking lot. It was dusk and the winter sky was slate blue, silvery near the horizon.

  It was a good time to go to the park. All the joggers, bikers, and kids (all the normal, legitimate people) would no longer be there; the park would be filling up with the perverts now.

  Ripe for picking. Time for cleanup.

  He didn’t have to drive for long.

  Getting out of a white Mustang was a Hispanic boy. Dwight smirked; he knew what the boy had been up to. Well, Dwight thought, slowing, it’s time to turn this kid’s life around.

  Salvation at the hands of Dwight Morris. He craned his neck to look at the boy and to make sure the boy knew he was looking.

  *

  Carlos had seen the black Toyota before. The man driving it was nondescript; an army of the same man passed through this park every week.

  But Carlos saw the man was interested in him and that interest made him feel better, made the rejection of the last man a little less painful. He turned to stare at the man, trying to make eye contact through the automobile glass and the dusky light. He watched as the car headed farther north, knowing that somewhere up there, the man would turn around and would drive by again.

  It was like a ritual. Married guys were careful; they didn’t need to get busted for homosexual solicitation in a Chicago city park.

  Carlos would make sure the guy knew he was no cop.

  *

  Dwight drove north, to where Foster dead-ended into the parking lot, and turned around. The lot was busy tonight, and he considered leaving: someone could see him take the boy and if there were questions…

  He shook his head. No one cared about these kids. Human garbage. And these guys: most of them didn’t want to be placed here, at a park when day was turning into night. He looked into the cars and saw mirror images, men like himself.

  Were they all tormented? Taunted and teased by this trash?

  The spic was up ahead, walking in front of the cars. He wore tight white pants and a black leather jacket. He swung his hips as he walked. Dwight slowed and looked over at him.

  The boy stopped, looking boldly right back at Dwight. He smiled and his hand whispered across his crotch.

  Make no mistake about this little whore.

  Dwight swung the pickup into the nearest parking spot and waited.

  *

  Carlos knew the man noticed him, saw, even from his vantage point on the road, the glimmer of interest in his eyes. He approached the truck and looked down, grateful the man had not pulled his cock out, as so many of them do.

  He stopped by the window and waited for the man to look at him. When he did, Carlos smiled.

  The man pressed the button to lower the window.

  “It’s a bit nippy to be out here tonight, don’t you think?”

  The man’s voice was warm, tinged with concern.

  Carlos shrugged. “Yes, but I like to walk. The cold is invigorating.”

  Carlos looked away, waiting for the man to say something else. If things went according to script, the man would ask him if he came here a lot.

  “Spend a lot of time here at the park?”

  Carlos smiled. Close enough.

  “No, not much.” He looked into Dwight’s eyes. “Want some company?”

  * * *

  Dwight thought that this one didn’t waste much time. He reached down, gripping the wooden edge of the Chicago Cutlery butcher knife he had placed on the floor. He squeezed it, knowing that the knife, like magic, would give him the power to do what he wanted with the boy.

  “Yeah, I could use a little. Hop in.” He unlocked the door and watched Carlos through the windshield as he crossed in front of the cab. This boy seemed different from the rest; for one thing he used the word “invigorating.” Most of the boys he’d met wouldn’t think to use a word with more than two syllables. And the boy was e
ffeminate. Very. Probably grow up to be one of those drag queens.

  “You don’t want to grow up to be one of them sissies that likes other men, do you?” Dwight had a sudden memory of his aunt Adele asking him one day when she caught him playing Barbies with Mary Jane McCuen next door. She had pulled seven-year-old Dwight away by his ear, dragging him home. “Grow up to be a goddamn queer.”

  Dwight shook his head, releasing the memory. He didn’t want to think about the things she did when they got home in the interest of making sure he didn’t grow up “queer.”

  Dwight concentrated on the boy, thinking: He’s better off with me. Dwight watched the boy open the door and slide in beside him.

  The two stared out the window for a while. Dwight tensed as he felt the boy’s hand wander to his thigh, then higher. Dwight lifted the hand and put it back on the seat. He grinned at him. “You don’t waste much time, do you?”

  Carlos looked embarrassed. “I just thought,” he stammered, “I thought you were looking for something.”

  “Like what?” How sick this boy is, how very twisted they all are. What happened to the children, Dwight wondered, picturing himself now in a completely different light, as a boy, poring over the toy section of the Sears Christmas catalog.

  “Boys like you don’t deserve none of that crap.”

  Dwight sucked in some breath. It was almost as if the memory had brought the voice of his aunt Adele to life again, made it audible here in his car, thirty some years later. He shook his head. The boy was talking.

  “I don’t know. Just thought you wanted some company.”

  Dwight felt Carlos staring at him, probably waiting for him to look back. Dwight turned his head.

  “You’re a policeman, aren’t you?”

  Dwight laughed. “Why? You afraid I’ll bust you?”

  “It’s happened.” The boy sat up straighter. “Not to me, of course, but there have been others. I’ve seen it in the Tribune.”

  “Yes, I bet you’re a very well-read young man.” Dwight paused. “No, I’m not connected with law enforcement in any way. Not in any way you’d understand.” Dwight saw the boy was mystified by his last sentence. Well—Dwight envisioned the dark boxes in his basement—he’d get over the mystery soon enough.